The field of bilingual education in Hong Kong provides a perfect window to study transformation of education in the context of wider processes of economic, institutional, political, sociolinguistic and cultural changes. As Hong Kong changed from a former British colony to a Special Administrative Region (SAR, hereafter) of the People’s Republic of China, the space of language education has seen the overlapping of old and new ideas regarding what languages should be learned or taught, by whom, when and to what degree. Such ideas and the related policies which have contributed to their institutionalisation cannot be detached from shifting conditions as to who gets to decide what language repertoires are attributed value in which sociolinguistic markets vis-à-vis local and trans-local processes of destabilization of the modern politics of language and culture.

The field of bilingual education in Hong Kong provides a perfect window to study transformation of education in the context of wider processes of economic, institutional, political, sociolinguistic and cultural changes. As Hong Kong changed from a former British colony to a Special Administrative Region (SAR, hereafter) of the People’s Republic of China, the space of language education has seen the overlapping of old and new ideas regarding what languages should be learned or taught, by whom, when and to what degree. Such ideas and the related policies which have contributed to their institutionalisation cannot be detached from shifting conditions as to who gets to decide what language repertoires are attributed value in which sociolinguistic markets vis-à-vis local and trans-local processes of destabilization of the modern politics of language and culture.